Why were you drawn to write about George Brinton McClellan, Jr.? What aspect of his life first inspired you?

It was by chance that I discovered Max. Within the first few days of becoming aware of him, I did some research and found I was interested in the contradictions of his life. He was raised in a fairly wealthy family that would be considered high society in either Philadelphia or New York, which was a far cry from some of the mugs he was rubbing shoulders with in Tammany Hall. He had a reputation for being honest; yet, the stories persisted about voter fraud in the 1905 election. I wanted to know more and I wasn’t sure from what I read why his career hit a dead end. I wondered if it was just the jinx of the office of Mayor of New York, which has killed many a political career, or something to do with his character. That aspect of his life inspired me. As I became deeply enmeshed in the research, I found that he was a very principled man and a capable administrator. I began to see he had been the one who really brought New York into the 20th century and made it the modern city it became. Today, much of the great public works he was involved in as mayor, such as the water mains, fire prevention, and the building of schools are now part of the city’s aging infrastructure. New York could use another Max.

What impact do you think McClellan’s father, a Civil War general, had on his son’s political career? How important is this father-son relationship?

The sons of famous men more often than not have had trouble getting out of their father’s shadow. I think this father-son relationship, in particular, was very important and colored Max’s outlook on his political career to a great extent; however, I don’t believe he would have ever become a politician had his father lived past Max’s senior year at Princeton.

In 1846, the General graduated from West Point, placing second in his graduating class and first among the engineers. General McClellan had been a soldier and an engineer, and I suspect, between the two careers, engineering was his first love. Max had wanted to go to West Point to follow in his father’s footsteps, but the General wouldn’t hear of it. He told Max that it was no longer a career for a gentleman and there would be no use for soldiers because there would be no more wars. Instead, he sent Max to Princeton with the expectation that Max would become an engineer. Max couldn’t convince his father that he had neither interest nor aptitude to become one. It was his math tutor who finally convinced the General that his son had talents, but that a talent for math was not one of them. After his father’s death and his graduation from college, he was adrift and uncertain about a career. He ended up in newspaper work at first, but in the course of that work, he discovered that he had a passion for politics. An old friend of his father’s convinced him to join Tammany Hall Democrats and not one of the independent groups, if he were serious about getting elected or appointed to any office. It was wise advice. The family had been staunch Democrats for several generations, and he would never have considered joining any other party. It was his father’s contacts from his days working on the piers in New York and the political connections his father made, when he ran against Lincoln in the election of 1864, that opened doors for Max. They were tremendously helpful to him in those early days of politics. The general had been popular in New York, and he was revered among Civil War veterans who fought under his command, and in Democratic circles in New York. Once in politics, Max became convinced that it was his destiny to climb the political ladder to the White House, a climb his father tried and failed. He planned his future political career moves as a way of completing what his father had failed to do. So, in short, his father’s influence was crucial to his political career.

In The Price of Honor, you mention McClellan’s military service in World War I and his holding a professorship at Princeton University. Considering this history of public activity, why has McClellan remained somewhat neglected in New York’s political history?

When you look at the history of his public career, I don’t think it’s a mystery that he’d been consigned to political oblivion. Two men carried on successful campaigns against him. Charles Francis Murphy, the Boss of Tammany Hall from 1902 until his death in 1924, had been a friend of Max’s. After Max helped Murphy keep his seat as a Tammany district leader, Murphy had to win City Hall, and Murphy bet that Max would be his best candidate. I think Murphy believed that Max was naive and would be easy to control from behind the scenes, but he began to see that wouldn’t be the case early on in Max’s first term. Unlike the first election, Murphy did nothing to help Max win the 1905 election. It was obvious on New Year’s Day 1906 that Max was a man without an organization; Murphy and all the district leaders left town to avoid showing up at the inauguration ceremonies. Murphy and Max declared war on each other, and the war went on for most the the next four years. When Max left office and established a law practice in New York, Murphy told the local judges, who were beholden to him, to black ball Max and refuse to hear any case he might bring before the courts. It was because of the generosity of his friends, who donated money to establish a chair at Princeton for Max, that he was able to establish an academic career. His high profile public career was over by 1910, and it was never revived because Murphy wouldn’t allow it.

Following Murphy, Hearst ran a very effective smear campaign against Max in his newspapers from 1904 on, and he didn’t let up until Max left office. Then, he transferred his animus to Max’s successor, William Jay Gaynor. Even Gaynor, who was anxious not to be perceived as a Tammany Hall Democrat, was determined to erase Max’s name from the ranks of mayors. Hearst accelerated his attacks on Max after the 1905 election, during a time when Hearst was throwing suit after suit against him to unseat him as mayor. Though Hearst tried, voter fraud was never proved in the case. In fact, after a couple of recounts, no evidence of fraud was found. The last thing Murphy would have sanctioned was ballot stuffing or some other tried and true method of winning an election fraudulently to help Max. Nonetheless, Hearst’s campaign against Max went on for years and was successful in making many readers of his newspapers believe he had won the election fraudulently. Even after Hearst ran the following year for governor and lost, he was still after Max’s seat. He continued to call him the “fraud mayor” or the “little mayor” and tried to make him sound like a blithering idiot. It inspired at least three people, that we know of, to plan assassination attempts against the “fraud mayor.” People began to forget that he was the mayor who finally got the reservoir project off the ground; who built all those new schools, a couple of hospitals, enlarged others; put meters in cabs; built high power pumping stations for fire fighters; and tried to make the city a better and healthier place to live. As we’re seeing in our own contentious times, that if you say something loud enough and long enough, whether what you’re crying is true or not, you are going to establish the thought in the the minds of citizens. Once someone drops out of the public eye, we tend to forget about the person and anything they had or hadn’t done.

He taught at Princeton for sixteen of the eighteen years that he was a member of the Princeton faculty with a two-year commitment to the army during World War I. During that time, he did some stumping for Democratic candidates in New York and spoke out on international issues, but he wasn’t as prominent then as he had been from 1892-1910. In 1915, he hit the news again when he took a tour behind the German lines before the United Sates got into the war. He was roundly criticized for the reports that the New York Times published; some Princeton faculty members wanted him fired. His name began to be connected unfairly to German sympathizers. He acquitted himself well as an ordnance officer and used his genius for getting things done to good use in getting supplies to the troops in France. His lack of political involvement during those years made his name unknown to anyone outside of New York or not among his own generation. Had he been able to stay in congress, as he had hoped to do before Murphy called him home, I think he might have become a prominent name in American political history. Nonetheless, his accomplishments in New York and some of the leadership he showed, particularly in military affairs, as a member of the minority party is worth acknowledging.

At a time when politics frequently seems to be marked by corruption, what value does McClellan’s loyalty to principle over party have for today’s readers?

I think Max’s principles over party stance would resonate well with most Americans today. As jaded as some of us might be about corruption in politics writ large or small, I think most of us are sick of it. Just in these first dozen years of the 21st century, we’ve seen a level of corruption and collusion the likes of which make the “robber barons” of the 19th century look quite trivial. We’ve taken to war in Iraq for oil resources, we’ve had a multinational oil corporation, BP, foul the waters of the Gulf, and anti-women, anti-gay, and anti-union state legislation. Politicians are following ideological agendas instead of concerning themselves with solving the big problems that face us now. When Max took office, his first concern was doing his job to the best of his ability and without undue influence of any sort. He might go along with a party’s nominee or work as well as he could within the structure of the party, but as an elected official his only concerns were to do the best job he knew how and to work for the good of the people. I think there is a real hunger for honest politicians, who aren’t in the back pocket of a special interest or an industry and spend their political capital in ways to make the lives of all citizens better.

Have you been pleased with the response to The Price of Honor?

From the little I know about the response to my book, I’m delighted that it has been added to the collections of seven of the eight Ivy League universities and other big name colleges and universities in the U.S. and Canada. It has also been added to institutions such as The New York Public Library and the British Library in London. My goal in writing the book was not only to learn something myself but to get Max’s name before the public again and to show that we are who we are because of pivotal figures in our past, whose names have been wiped out from the collective memory. Our children and grandchildren need good models in public life. We should give them the message that an honest and honorable life is worth living and to help them understand that making lots of money and amassing lots of power aren’t the only goals in life.

–Kathleen Shultz